E. Hoffmann Price

“ Verrill had by now revised somewhat his notions on savages. "Then why do you put up with that wild-eyed fanatic?"
Ardelan smiled indulgently. "You people from the outside know many strange things. How to come down from the stars. How to make guns. But the few of you I've talked to are dog-ignorant when it comes to people. The fire god is something our neighbors don't have. It makes us stick together better, and keeps us from fighting among ourselves. Aren't any of your people smart enough to have gods?" ”

“ Before he could make up his mind, Falana said, "Turn around and see—I've got it."
As he twisted about, the horse shifted, moving out of the shadow and into light strong enough for him to see the ruby she had in her hand. It collected enough of the glow to pulse and flame as though in its own right. ”

“ She snuggled closer, and he said, "Falana!" as though touch and taste and smell had identified the girl as surely as sight. She was Falana, the aunt of his first patient. She wore the shapeless, crude garments of the tribe, yet it was as though there were neither homespun nor even a wisp of air between them.
Falana had no words to waste as she found his mouth in the darkness. There was nothing to explain. When he stepped back and further into the gloom, she was close as ever; and, as if seeing in the darkness, she seemed to know exactly where he spread his sheepskin mat—
She did know. ”

“ Life under the domes was comfortable, with controlled climate, law and order, science and art. Comfortable, civilized, and sensible. While Terra—
"Be a sensible Venusian," was what Linda meant. "Don't go looking for trouble when you can do better without. Don't be a typical Terrestrian!"
The whole clash of the previous night had been silly. Irritated by Gil Dawson's giving Linda a ruby as a souvenir of his official inspection-tour of the Council-controlled Terrestrian trading-posts, Verrill had flung the trinket into the lake. ”

“ I am a doctor."
"What for? People die anyway."
"A doctor," Verrill explained, concealing his dismay, "is not to keep people from dying. He is to make it more agreeable for them until they finally have to die."
Ardelan addressed his henchmen. The answers summed up to this: that if nothing much ailed a man, he'd get well by himself, and if something really incapacitated him, it would of course be something so serious that he could not last long at the best.
Ardelan digested this wisdom, then asked, "Verrill, can you make knives like these you gave that man?"
"I am a doctor, not a blacksmith." ”

“ Dawson was not at the post. But while a head start was a happy omen, Verrill knew that it had its limits, since his plan to ingratiate himself with the barbarians until he could seize the fetish-ruby and return to the post involved so much time that the gain of hours or days meant little.
Ingratiate himself—steal the Fire of Skanderbek—and get out—infinitely simpler than Linda's suggestion, probably an utterly impossible one, of deserving it finally as a gift. His first look at the bearded mountaineers convinced him that no amount of do-gooding could ever move them to gratitude. ”

“ For a moment, Verrill thought that the old fellow was a veteran of The War. His age made him fantastic in a colony where men over forty were scarce, and those over fifty, rarities; though old women were more than plentiful.
Verrill declined the gift of the pistol. "Give it to the holy man," he said. "I did not come here for pay."
Then he went with Ardelan to sit under the black awning where the chief settled disputes, and planned raids on neighboring tribes.
"Excellency," Verrill pointed out, "holding a pistol at a doctor's head is no way of making sure he'll help the patient." ”

“ Linda made her final appeal: "Leaving all this, to scramble around in that terrible waste and desolation—oh, do be sensible!"
Her voice, and the kiss that followed it, made Verrill at once aware of what generations of Venusians had taken for granted. He looked across the gardens and the lake, and up at the prodigious span of girders. The original purpose of the structure had been to house a military outpost that was to have outflanked a comparable one on Luna. ”

“ To make his escape with the Fire of Skanderbek, he would have to ride on a few cattle- and sheep-stealing raids and so acquire sufficient skill for getting away with his loot.
It was Falana who explained the monstrous ruby's status as a tribal fetish. "Ages ago," she said, "the gods destroyed the world with fire, and after the flames had gone, the ghosts of the dead flames danced over the earth, and killed whoever came near. They killed without burning. The ghosts of the fire lived in the earth and air and water. And there were only small patches where men could live. ”

“ The most skilled cosmeticians of the Venusian Domes could not begin to duplicate Falana's glowing red-bronze hair.
IV
By the time medical supplies and equipment arrived—and also a message from Linda, who was thrilled from having heard of his good work among the barbarians—Ardelan's mountaineers had begun to accept Verrill as a man, and not a mere medico. His efforts to ride their half-tamed horses, time and again picking himself up from where they had thrown him, to mount and try again, amused them enormously, and gave them a comfortable feeling of superiority—and evoked a degree of respect. ”

“ Dawson talked about you to our men, and to our neighbors."
"You stick to your own business," Ardelan interposed, quietly. "He will stick to his. He is an outlaw from his own people. Naturally, his enemies try to harm him."
The snarling saint listened. He and Ardelan eyed each other. What unspoken thought passed between them was beyond Verrill's guessing; yet it must have had force, for Kwangtan offered no objection when Ardelan said, "Verrill, come in with me and bow to the flame." ”

“ Ardelan shook his head. "There is a personal enemy of yours among our neighbors. I can't take any chance of your being killed or captured."
"You're making a priest of me!" Verrill said, mockingly. "Living on the fat of the land, and taking none of the risks."
"You've made that for yourself," Ardelan retorted. "And speaking of priests, you'll have one for a patient."
"How's that?"
"Kwangtan is coughing a lot. He's failing rapidly. We had always thought he would live forever."
Verrill shrugged. "He's old, so old he hasn't much time left. ”

“ In the years just before The War, engineers and scientists had been sent from Terra to build those enormous domes, plastic-sheathed and air-tight, to exclude the raging dust-storms and the overwhelming concentration of formaldehyde which made up most of the natural Venusian atmosphere. Rather than rely on any system depending upon chemically prepared oxygen, they had established gardens, orchards, fields of plant-life which liberated sufficient oxygen to maintain the required balance. ”

“ Verrill contrasted them with the studiedly elegant ladies of Venus, and with Linda particularly.
"We have enough sheep, and enough women," the chief explained. "The sheep don't make trouble. The women do. If my men are not to cut each other's throats, they must have outside enemies to keep them busy. Or the jealousies of their wives would prod them to too much competition with each other."
Thinking back to his quarrel with Gil Dawson, Verrill had to concede Ardelan's point and principle. ”

“ You haven't more than maybe one-two-three enemies on my account. But as long as you lived alone, doctoring all day while most of the men are out with the flocks, they'd all be suspecting and hating you."
There was nothing to explain to Ardelan. The chief seemed to have been expecting something of the sort. "Falana," he said to Verrill, "probably didn't get around to telling you this, but you can either send her home, or else take her to the fire temple to get Kwangtan's blessing. Then you won't be a stranger anymore, and you'll get along better." ”

“ Well before dawn, Falana went to the door to get a small bundle she had left lying at the jamb. Before Verrill knew what was happening, he got his first whiff of breakfast cooked in his own home.
"Eating with neighbors," Falana observed, "must have been awful. And you never know who might poison you." ”

“ There's a place, far away from here, where a blaze like that comes from the ground sometimes when a camp fire is built too near it. But the wind whisks the flames out and then there's nothing but a smell. ”

“ Now is your chance.... It won't ever be better."
Falana was right, so very right, yet Verrill balked. He mounted up, with his medical kit, and with a pair of pistols thrust into his sash.
He was worried, and worn down. Tending to Kwangtan, and within reaching distance of the ruby, had been difficult. Worse yet, there was the problem created by Falana. Whenever he convinced himself that once back in the Venusian Domes, he would forget the Terrestrian girl, his argument went into reverse: and he knew that regardless of distance, the bond could not be broken in fact. ”

“ He and Kwangtan were supposed to be able to talk with the gods. That was pure nonsense. The gift was largely a feminine monopoly. Falana undoubtedly knew all about Linda, instead of merely about the Venusian Domes.
Verrill answered, "I can't rob a patient. If he dies or gets well, then it will be different...."
Falana shrugged, and for no apparent reason, moved a bundle wrapped up in a cape. "Suit yourself, Verrill, but you are letting your luck wear thin. ”

“ Verrill retorted. "Among my own people, there are old books, ancient before Skanderbek was even dreamed of. And it is written always how one leader or another went back to the gods, not dying as other men died. But we know better. ”

“ At last they came to Ardelan's mud-walled houses, huddled on a rocky shelf which overhung a fertile valley. The settlement was surrounded by a wall of earth and stone, and had escaped contamination because no one would have bombed a 12,000 foot range of limestone peaks except by mistake. ”

“ That is our law."
"Is that why Kwangtan wouldn't help?"
"Not at all. He's not a stranger. And if the women who were working on the boy had kept at it until he choked to death, no one would have hurt them. They're not strangers."
"The quicker I get out of here, the better!"
Ardelan permitted himself to smile. "Once you are no longer a stranger, doctoring will not be so dangerous."
III
As Ardelan's reserve thawed out, Verrill pressed him with questions. "Your men talk about nothing but raids on your neighbors' flocks, and about feuds. Haven't you enough sheep?" ”